Saturday, November 14, 2015

Though American Interference May Have Created It, ISIS Will Have To Be Destroyed

By Manifesto Joe

The Islamo-fascists of ISIS, I have no doubt, are essentially a creation of Western, and particularly American, interference in the Middle East. I confess to being somewhat "neo-isolationist" to the extent that I regard anti-U.S. "blowback" as the major cause of our troubles in that region now. I am thoroughly sympathetic with President Obama's reluctance to put American "boots on the ground" in the Mideast, especially since most Americans (not me) got suckered into an expensive and needless war there back in 2003.

But the terrorism that we've seen in the past several days has underscored a point that can't be evaded any longer: These ISIS people are madmen who must be annihilated much the same way that German Nazis and their fascist allies had to be smashed during World War II.

War takes a terrible toll on its participants, and it should always be regarded as a last resort. My old man won five Bronze Stars in the Pacific Theater of World War II, and he was never wounded physically, but the toll it took on him psychologically was pretty obvious.

I was one of those obnoxious little kids in the early 1960s who kept asking, "What did you do in the war, Daddy?" The old man would give me his best Gary Cooper impersonation -- "Oh, not much, son."

I didn't realize until decades later, until after he'd died prematurely, that the war was an experience that he really didn't want to talk about. He did tell my mother about at least one incident -- a Japanese soldier who'd been hiding in the jungle came into his tent one night. The Japanese soldier had a bayonet. There was some hand-to-hand. Ultimately my old man took the bayonet away from the Japanese soldier and stabbed him with it.

That sort of experience leaves terrible scars on people, scars that they carry with them long after they come home. I still don't know what most of my Dad's Bronze Stars were for, and at this point I don't want to know.

Having seen what the effect on people can be, I am generally opposed to war. But I'm not a pacifist. Wars, like fistfights, on rare occasions become necessary.

In Germany the Nazis arguably were a direct product of the harshness of the Versailles Treaty. The Allies who came out on top in World War I largely wanted payback, and they made the German people suffer a lot for being on the losing side. Some of the German veterans -- one Adolf Hitler among them -- were unhappy with the terms of defeat. And when they rose again, they did so with an insanity seldom rivaled in human history.

Similarly, I fear that it was American meddling that was instrumental in creating the ISIS fanatics. But they are viciously enslaving those who live under their dominion, and they are destroying antiquities and art that can never be saved or duplicated. Then there is their terrorism. These are, to the point, crazy pieces of shit who will have to be utterly defeated. Until that happens, we won't have the luxury of debating their origins. We are at war. It's sometimes that simple.

Once the Nazis were beaten, the West could analyze what created them. Sadly, no lessons were learned from history that time, and they probably won't be this time. And we're probably going to have to ally the U.S. with some clearly unsavory characters, like Russia's President Puto -- yeah, I know, it's Putin. It wouldn't be the first time the U.S. has held its collective nose in wartime. The Soviets under Stalin were "allies" during World War II.

And I cringe to think of the corporate Republicans who will profit off this war, as they have off others. Too bad we can't send them to the front lines. They always seem so enthused about sending the children of the poor there.

But there are times when fighting simply becomes necessary. This looks like one of them.

7 comments:

In 2003, unlike you, I fell for the line: " ... If not now, when; if not where, there; if not us, who? ... ". The action in 1991 was the last opportunity to insert our diplomatic and democratic values in the mid-east.

To be brutally candid about the issue, without choice there is no democracy; without democracy, it isn't capitalism. ISIS/ISIL is a criminal enterprise chargeable under our RICO statutes, if they destroy US government property, or the property of subordinate states and territories. Come to think of it --- that would be an excellent opportunity to terminally quash 'states rights' by prosecuting the destruction of the property of any state or territory of the US.

ISIS/ISIL is not a real state/nation. It is a religious collective more like a cult (too bad it's not an occult cult); how do we declare war on a cult with no address, capitol, legislature, judiciary, executive, cabinet or boundaries. It is locked in a civil war with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and soon --- Jordan. This is an extension of the religious conflict that is observed between the subordinated groups within Islam.

I return to my original perspective. Task the Attorney General and the CIA, with prosecutorial and forensic/lab support from the FBI with identifying, locating and capturing these criminals for trial. Staff and provision a complete operation ... in addition to their current staffs for this task. Finance them efficaciously and build the cases with good intel and torture-free interrogations. I would suspend: habeus, 4th, 5th, 6th amendments & trial by jury.

Build a special prison just for them, 1 prisoner per cell, 24 sound-proof cells per module [for 1 hour of exercise per day] and enough modules. to house them all ... staffed with Muslim chaplains and Muslim cooks. Deliver their food by conveyor or slid under the solid door. These cells should be as passively inhumane as we can make them. Each prisoner gets to pray 5 times daily, a visit from a chaplain twice weekly and a homily piped into the cell each week. We could even have the Muezzin piped around the facility to aid their religious practice.

Like you, I'm fed up with the half-step methodology that has promulgated, prolonged and perpetrated hostilities up till now. This would also be a jobs program for a bunch of young lawyers as prosecutors and college grads as investigators. Waive 8% of their college loans annually.

I hate that we (the U.S.) can't just completely extricate ourselves from the whole situation. If we had simply contained Saddam Hussein, whose Baath Party dictatorship was generally secular, it's quite possible that we wouldn't be facing this now. His tyranny, however hideous, held Iraq together. But unfortunately I think events have made the choice for us.

Typically, the US' approach to Foreign Policy is, if we broke it we fix it. Here the proper fix is keeping our hands off. Pulling everything out; sealing off the entire area so that their effluents and influence is trapped behind the oil curtain. They won't be able to sell their oil and we'll have to find some way of dealing with the issue; when they export, one of the products is evangelical reactionaries' terrorism. Their funda-gelicals are just like ours. Gorbanifar = Cruz, Khomeinei = Huckabee, Moseim Brotherhood = Family Research Council, Abu Nidal = Terry McVeigh, etc.

Since we broke it by interceeding in their internal politics, the solution is to withdraw. By sealing their discontent within their current sphere of governance, their funda-gelicals are their problem since they can't get out. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the 19 Saudis of 9/11 were being sought as seditionists by Faisel's Intel Police. They effectively used binLaden to export [some of] their dissidents. If so ... they'll do it again ... or try to.

The common denominator to all dictatorships is the absence of a successor in office to the 'Big Fella'. The Baath Party & the Communist Party, Beshir alAssad, Gamal Nasser, Coscuescu, Hitler, Kemal Attaturk, Pappandraeu, Mohamar Kaddahfi & Marshall Tito are excellent examples of imploded dictatorships from external sources, and the chaos that followed.

Seal'em off; identify the terrorists hiding there; seek extradition for trial; capture the ones who ex-filtrate, and try them also.

After a month of reflection, I've reconsidered. We have no avenue to peace, on our cultural terms. in the Levant. It's time to abandon them to their values instead of delivering them to our values or our values to them. The only reason the republi-can'ts haven't nuked'em is oil ... and a market for weapons and weapons platforms. Time to cease genuflecting to business and instead efficaciously pursue peace in our time. It won't come with disarmament either uni-lateral or pan-lateral, but it will come when the enterprise sector can profit from peace not war.

Before we jump on the growing bandwagon to put U.S. troops on the ground again in Iraq, we really should pause to reflect on this.For one thing, there is the question of what Iraq itself wants. And all indications are that Iraq is very much opposed to the idea of U.S. ground forces re-entering their nation. This inconvenient truth is something that often gets overlooked in the rush to re-start the Iraq War.When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, we pretty much destroyed that nation, leaving it in a state of anarchy. Iraq to this day remains probably the most violent place on earth. And yet, amazingly, the Iraqis still oppose the U.S. sending ground forces back to their nation.Why is this? Because the Iraqis know (even if the Americans don't) that, as bad as things are right now in Iraq, the situation will be made even worse if the U.S. sends ground forces back into the nation.I get the feeling that, if the U.S. invades again, it'll not only have to contend with ISIS, it will once again face a hostile reception from many of the Iraqi people. The first time we invaded Iraqi, we were astonished at the vicious insurgency that arose to fight us.This time around, we really have no excuse. Not that this will deter any future invasion. The American people have long had a bad case of historical amnesia.But the bottom line is that the vast majority of the Iraqi people (including the government) are strongly opposed to the U.S. sending ground forces again into their nation. I have no doubt that we'll once again not be greeted as liberators, but as a invading force that will face violent resistance. Oh, and then there's the matter of international law (we'll be once again breaking it if we re-invade, for those who care)So what is the solution? There really is no easy answer. But I do suspect that invading Iraq again will only make a hellish situation even worse. The Iraqis grasp this truth, even if the Americans don't.

I am glad that Obama is being careful about this, but at the risk of sounding a bit chauvinistic, I am skeptical about Iraq's ability to deal with ISIS militarily. I honestly thought that ISIS would have taken Baghdad by now and am surprised that they haven't.

If there's any way to keep Americans out of the Mideast, I'm all for it. But I seriously doubt that either Iraq or Syria (especially with Assad still there) can handle this.

Pull everything from the middle-east; pull it back to Jordan and then across to Israel, Port of TelAviv, and bring it home or park it in Germany, Israel, Italy, Britain. Let the people hash it out among themselves. I believe the peaceful Muslim community can contain the fundamentalists. There are some cultural conflicts that create a chasm between our cultures and we have no standing to seek change from them. Their paternalistic - if not misogynistic - attitude about women; their practice of religion dominating all aspects of their lives: family structures, enterprise, government and community hierarchy. Choice is the linchpin of both capitalism and democracy that we seem hell-bent on vocally exporting - while actually shipping funda-gelical religion instead - is inconsistent, especially when the three are in indivisible packages from our chamber-of-commerce to their dirt streets, without sanitation, potable water and limited power grid, poor telephony.

We are seeking to force a culture clash as great as I witnessed in the Korea of 1967.

Separated at birth ...

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"I consider myself a reasonably tough person. But if you waterboarded me enough times, I would probably sign my house and car over to you and confess to the murders of Jonbenet Ramsey and the Lindbergh baby." -- MJ

About Me

As all my posts state, I am an underground writer living in Texas. I am doing political blogging under a nom de plume for various reasons. I was born in 1956 in a small Texas town; I now live in a medium-large city. I have been writing my entire adult life, and have been published, both mainstream and underground. In my teens I was actually a libertarian-type conservative. Meeting Young Republican types in college was crucial to my being cured of that once and for all. At one point in my 20s I was something of a Trotskyite, but eventually became a more moderate progressive.
Since I started this blog and affiliated with other blogs, my writing has appeared in the USA Today, CNN and Reuters online editions, in Buzzflash.com, Crooks and Liars, and a number of other popular sites. My invaluable mentors have been Marc McDonald at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, and Blue Girl of They Gave Us a Republic and other fine blogs.
In keeping with anonymity, this is all I should say.

See "Manifesto Joe's Great Moments in Conservative History, Chapter 1"

Favorite progressive movies

Mister Roberts -- see January 2009 post.

The Big Parade, The Crowd, Our Daily Bread, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Seven Days in May, Dr. Strangelove, The Grapes of Wrath, Silkwood, Salt of the Earth, Born on the Fourth of July, A Face in the Crowd, The Manchurian Candidate, Easy Rider, Chinatown, Reds, The Naked and the Dead.

Fear on Trial.

Open City, Seven Beauties, Swept Away, The Bicycle Thief, Grand Illusion, Fury, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremburg, Pressure Point, The President's Analyst, From Here to Eternity, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Milagro Beanfield War, Native Son, Bob Roberts, There Will Be Blood.

Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Hombre, Cool Hand Luke, Pan's Labyrinth, Network, Cutter's Way, All Quiet on the Western Front, Twelve Angry Men, Matewan, Return of the Seacaucus Seven, American History X, Putney Swope, The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night, Norma Rae, North Country.